"Richmond-based artist and musician Stephen Vitiello transforms environments with the physicality of sound. His installations have been presented in New York's Whitney Museum, London's Museum 52, Paris' Cartier Foundation, and dozens of other sites around the globe. His music has been released by labels like 12k, New Albion, and Sub Rosa, and has included collaborations with Machinefabriek, Lawrence English, Pauline Oliveros, Scanner, and Anduin. This DVD, however, is his first commercially available collection of collaborations with visual artists. Soundtracks includes videos and short films by Seoungho Cho, Matt Flowers, Eder Santos, Kevin Gallagher, Andrew Deutsch, and Nic DeSantis, all scored by Vitiello along with some assistance from musicians Molly Berg and Josh Quarles. Visually stunning and sonically captivating, this is a release you can truly immerse yourself in. Select the play all option and a bonus video/soundtrack will be revealed. Packaged in a silkscreened, chipboard case with insert." Limited stock.

"This project started with a commission from Eighth Blackbird and Ben Broening to create a multi-channel composition for the University of Richmond's Third Practice Electroacoustic Music Festival. I wrote out a set of instructions for each musician and recorded them separately from the rest of the group. The first sessions were with Molly, Michael, Nick and Lisa. I started to work with their sounds, layering, processing, adding and eliminating elements until I found something that felt musical and spatial. The result was a 10-channel mix of 'Rush and Lullaby (2).' The instructions were simple:, play a pattern of 3 notes, play the sound of an animal, etc. Interpretation was wide open. Molly played the sound of a charging baby boar on her flute. Lisa played a short pattern on the piano that I used over and over again. Following the premiere of 'Rush,' I did another session with Matthew and Matt. This resulted in 'One Violin.' From there I just kept on going with the sounds I had recorded to produce the rest of the record." -- Stephen Vitiello.

Stephen Vitiello is a sound/media artist based in Richmond, Virginia, and this is his seventh full-length release -- his first for Sub Rosa. Vitiello is an established name in electroacoustic sound experimentation, having collaborated with artists, musicians and choreographers including Pauline Oliveros, Tony Oursler, Constance De Jong, Nam June Paik, Eder Santos, Scanner, Andrew Deutsch, Yasunao Tone, Frances-Marie Uitti, Dara Birnbaum and Jem Cohen, etc. This piece is a work in progress evolving from the numerous recordings Vitiello made of the sculptures of American artist Donald Judd (1928-1994) in Marfa, Texas. Judd challenged the artistic convention of originality by using industrial processes and materials such as steel, concrete and plywood to create large, hollow minimalist sculptures, mostly in the form of boxes, which he arranged in repeated simple geometric forms. High-precision microphones are placed directly on the surface of Judd's "specific objects," which capture a subtle combination of sounds resonating through the artwork, as well as ambient sounds. Vitiello sees this work as a tribute to one of the greatest American artists of the 20th century. These recordings were created during an impromptu residency sponsored by the Marfa Theater and the Chinati Foundation. The results were a performance (with and without Tetsu Inoue) and two fairly large sound installations. As Vitiello himself explains: "Sounds were captured in and around the Donald Judd installations at Chinati, in a glider, in fields of grasshoppers and along some unknown street. Marfa is a very quiet town. The most significant sound event is when the train comes through each day, which can happen at any time of day or night. Three years after my visit, most of what I experienced in Marfa has probably been modified by memory. The sound of the train is the only recognizable source sound that has been left fairly unhurt by time-stretching and other forms of electronic and mental processing."